Unofficial news and tips about Google

April 4, 2006

Google Reader - Share Your Favourite Blogs

"Mom always taught us to share and now we know why: it's fun. Google Reader, which keeps track of websites you like to read regularly, just added the ability to share what you like to read with your friends." (Mihai Parparita, Google Reader)

If you use Google Reader, a feed reader similar to Bloglines, you can set labels for each feed you are subscribed to. Now you can share all the feeds that have a certain label, for example Google. Google mashes all the feeds that share the label and creates another feed you can send to your friends or embed in your site.

What Google doesn't tell you is how to customize the embedded clip to match your site design. You should go to Google Reader, click the Share link, select the label you want to share, how many items the clip should contain. Stick with the default theme, unless you really like one of the few themes provided by Google. Copy the code to your site:

<div id="googlereader">..... the code from Google Reader ....</div>

To customize the look, you'll use CSS. You'll just have to know that the title is a h3 element, the links are included in an unordered list, so you just have to style ul and li. The CSS will look similar to the one below:

If you have more than one blog, this is a good way to promote the other blogs. If you want to keep track of your favourite blogs, this is a good way of showing your visitors what do you like. Another reason for adding Google Reader to your site is if you use Blogger: each post page contains a list of 10 previous posts, but visitors can't see your latest posts which may be better and of more interest to your readers.

If you want to add the latest news from Google Operating System on you site, just copy this code: